Australia and UAE sign new air services agreement

Australia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed (12-Feb-2010) an expanded bilateral air services agreement, under which UAE airlines may operate up to an additional seven services per week into Australia’s major gateway airports (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth), provided these services operate via a regional port, such as Cairns, Darwin or Adelaide. As well as the previously agreed seven extra services per week from Mar-2010, Etihad Airways will be entitled to a further seven frequencies from Mar-2011. At present, the airline operates 21 services per week to/from Australia. Etihad is reportedly considering launching services to Adelaide to utilise the frequencies to be made available from Mar-2011 (TravelToday, 15-Feb-2010). Existing arrangements allowing Emirates an extra seven weekly services from Mar-2010 and a further seven from Mar-2011 were confirmed, building on the 70 weekly services Emirates currently operates. Air Arabia will also be entitled to operate up to seven services per week from Mar-2011. Reciprocal capacity increases were agreed for Australian airlines. [more]

You may also be interested in the following articles...

There have recently been important shifts in Virgin Australia's partnership relations, as Air New Zealand withdraws its ownership and the roles of Singapore Airlines and Etihad evolve with HNA becoming a substantial shareholder. As a consequence, Virgin is restructuring its long haul network for the first time in over two years. Individual changes are not significant, but they help tie up loose ends in Virgin's strategy. Virgin and its US JV partner Delta have been static since United and Qantas-American Airlines greatly altered the Australia-US market profile, a route which constitutes most of Virgin's long haul network.

Virgin struggled to find a use for what was essentially leftover aircraft capacity that it allocated to Sydney-Abu Dhabi as part of a JV with Etihad. With a limited fleet, North America beckoning, and Etihad seemingly losing some lustre since a Virgin-Singapore Airlines partnership, Virgin is having to cut Sydney-Abu Dhabi to free up capacity to relaunch Melbourne-Los Angeles.

Virgin will still commit to its Etihad partnership by adding three weekly Perth-Abu Dhabi flights on the A330-200, which will finally be moved out of the domestic market and deployed long haul. Since the end of the West Australian mining boom, these well equipped aircraft are no longer needed on transcontinental domestic service. Virgin's fleet of five 777-300ERs now will exclusively be used on Los Angeles.

The A380 is once again under media scrutiny, despite there being no major movement on the type. Comments from Air France and Qantas about not taking further A380s have long been assumed, and it has been apparent that Malaysia Airlines does not even have the need for its A380s. Singapore Airlines not renewing the lease on its first A380 is hardly surprising, and offers no definitive conclusion about the A380 or second-hand market; early A380s had different production and are not as efficient as later models. The lack of movement on the A380neo continues to irk the model's largest customer by far, Emirates, and may not make for a productive relationship as Emirates weighs an A350 or 787 order.

For most, the A380 continues to fly. How and where it flies is changing. Flights to and from the Middle East are becoming more common as Gulf airlines, and mostly Emirates, take delivery of A380s. A further shift to the Middle East is inevitable. In Japan there has been a near exodus of A380s; airlines dropping the type as they moved from Narita to Haneda, which cannot accommodate the A380 during the day, and Singapore Airlines down-gauging. Intra-Asia flying is decreasing – notable given the growth of A380s based in the region. Services by the A380 to Australia are growing, perhaps as it becomes an easy market for airlines to redeploy capacity amid European security concerns and trans-Pacific overcapacity.